


Hunter, Huntress

by Raven_Ehtar



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Destiel - Freeform, F/F, Gen, Genderbending, Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-14
Updated: 2013-05-22
Packaged: 2017-12-05 07:46:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/720574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raven_Ehtar/pseuds/Raven_Ehtar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Confusion ensues when the Winchesters wake to find female versions of themselves in their beds. Things only get more confusing for Dean when he sees that his and Cass’s counterparts are much closer than he and Cass. Maybe. And what the hell caused this anyway??</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part I

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by some genderbent gif sets on tumblr. They were so much fun I decided to try having the characters and their female counterparts interact. Though after the initial inspiration, there shouldn’t be any resemblance to the gif sets.

### Part I

### Cut Bank, Montana  
Four weeks ago

* * *

It was a warm night. Warm and quiet with the scent of approaching rain heavy on the air. 

The streets of Cut Bank were mostly empty about this time, being a small enough town that any businesses staying open after eight or nine would be losing more money than they made. Sally Bedford was an employee of one of the few places that _did_ stay open beyond that unofficial cut off time, a local diner called the White Hart. The diner stayed open much longer than anywhere else and as Sally was the one to lock up, she got to stay even later. 

She didn’t really mind all that much. The pay wasn’t stellar, but she liked her job well enough. She enjoyed interacting with people, and in a town this size she knew all the regulars, some since childhood. And since she didn’t have to get up early the next morning, what did she care about late nights?

Still, it might have been nice to have finished up earlier than midnight, she reflected as she hurried along her way. She walked to and from work when she didn’t have any errands to run that required a car. Her house was close, so there wasn’t much sense in wasting the fuel to drive. That frugal instinct felt more and more like a mistake as she walked the darkened streets, hurrying her pace slightly. She wasn’t normally a nervous person, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being watched as she made her way home. 

_Ridiculous,_ she thought to herself, unconsciously picking up her pace again. She’d been a part of this town her entire life, there wasn’t a single corner of it she didn’t know. There was no such thing as an unfamiliar street for Sally. Yet she was hurrying from the diner to her home, only the second best known route after the one she took as a child from her parent’s house to school. She was hurrying because the shadows felt unfriendly, threatening. 

By the time her front door came into sight she was practically jogging down the pavement, her calm pretense frayed away. For whatever reason she did not feel safe exposed on the street. Tomorrow she would _definitely_ be taking her car. As she approached her front steps she pulled out her keys, finding the one to her latch while on the move. 

As she stood on the step the feeling of being watched became overwhelming, her mind became a blank. She fought with the lock. It had never given her trouble before, but now it was refusing to cooperate, jamming instead of turning. As she struggled, Sally thought she heard something, some kind of scuffle not faraway over the frantic sound of jingling keys. 

She froze, and listened, eyes scanning the darkness behind her for the source of the phantom sound. She wasn’t sure what it had been, or from where, or even if she had _really_ heard it or if it had been her imagination. 

Still, she slipped in the door as soon as she got it open – a long five seconds – and closed it firmly behind her, locking it again. For a moment Sally stood, leaning against the door, the solid wooden barrier a relief as it pressed into her shoulder blades. Anything that separated her from the menacing darkness outside. 

After minute or so to just breathe, Sally laughed at herself, though it still sounded shaky to her own ears. Her, a grown woman jumping at shadows and rustling leaves. It must have been a more tiring day than she’d realized if that was how she was responding to her walk home. 

Still, she reminded herself as she walked toward her bedroom: Car tomorrow.

* * *

Before the incoming clouds blotted out the full moon, the silvery light shimmered over a dark, shallow pool. It was a viscous fluid, spread wide and messily, all originating from beneath the still, prone body of a would-be attacker that had followed Sally home from the diner. 

He had watched her for some time, familiarizing himself with her routine and habits. Tonight was to be the night all of his preparation and planning would come to fruition, just as he had always imagined. 

He waited outside the diner for Sally to lock up. He followed her home at a fair distance and then lay in wait. He would let her open her door and then rush her, force her inside and lock the door behind them. She lived alone, so they would have the privacy they would need.

But just as he was preparing to make his run he’d heard something shift in the bushes beside him. He’d started to turn, and then there had been a hand clamped over his mouth and a white hot pain in his back, sliding between his ribs and into the lungs.

It was all wrong. It’s not how the plan was meant to go at all. He watched Sally retreat into her house without him, more concerned about losing her than in losing the copious amounts of blood he could feel running down his back and into the grass. Whoever was holding him up eventually let him into to the ground, landing hard on his face as none of his muscles obeyed him.

He wondered who it was that had snuck up on him, had ruined his plan. Then he wondered what language it was they were speaking, because it sure as hell wasn’t English. He tried to get his mouth to form words, but like the rest of his body, it ignored him. 

Then there was an explosion of pain from his back, between his shoulders, and a sickening, wet crunching noise.

Then he lay still, and wondered nothing at all.

* * *

### Kettle Falls, Washington  
Present day

* * *

It wasn’t the weirdest way to start a day. Hell, if Dean actually sat down and tried to remember all of the ways he’d woken up over the years, or the situations he’d woken up into and rate them, then this probably wouldn’t even make the top ten.

Well. Maybe the top ten. But definitely not the top five.

Probably.

It was made especially strange because it came out of nowhere. He and Sam had rolled into a little Podunk town in northern Washington, following a trail of bodies that they’d thought had a werewolf at the end of it, or possibly a shapeshifter with a weird taste for human hearts. This town had been the one most recently hit with a total of three dead and heartless, which was very noticeable when the population was less than 2,000.

After hitting all the usual checkpoints as Special Agents Roberts and Johnson – the police, the morgue and the families – they’d found surprisingly little, except that it probably _wasn’t_ a werewolf. The moon phases were right, but the bodies were wrong. No evidence of mauling or otherwise being chewed on, so not a werewolf. And the shapeshifter idea – which had already been weak – only became weaker as time went on. Shapeshifters had no need for hearts, and were generally good at staying under the radar. This job was bringing too much attention just to satisfy an organ fetish.

So with those few clues and no fresh leads – the last kill having taken place on the third night of the full moon, two days ago – Dean and Sam had trudged back to their cheap motel to brainstorm. The longer they thought, the more it looked like the work of humans, just some freak on a killing spree and making off with the hearts. Disgusting, but not really their bag. Still, there were a few more things to check before they bailed for the next town. If they couldn’t find anything in the next few days then they’d start casting about for a different job and move on.

That had been last night, and Dean had collapsed into the hard motel bed as soon as they called it a night, asleep before his head hit the pillow. He’d been awake more than twenty-four hours, and a good portion of those spent hauling ass to this little corner of nowhere, running on nothing but caffeine and obstinacy. He was used to running on little to no sleep, but that didn’t mean he had to like it, or that when the opportunity presented itself he wouldn’t drop like a sack of rocks. 

It was the closest thing to an excuse he had for why when an arm flopped over him in the small hours of the morning he wasn’t instantly on his feet, gun in hand.

Through the befuddled fog in his brain he registered the arm as being nonthreatening, heavy with sleep and slender – a girl’s arm. Struggling towards consciousness Dean couldn’t remember bringing a girl to the motel, or of having Sammy pack himself off to another room for privacy. Still, having a sleepy arm draped over you at the break of dawn was pretty convincing evidence, and in his state he wasn’t questioning it too closely. Instead he attempted to bury his head further into his pillows, intent on catching at least another hour of sleep before forcing his abused body vertical.

Just as he was slipping back into blessed sleep a drowsy voice behind him asked, “When did you get in, Cassie?”

And ouch, didn’t that hurt his pride? One night stands were his usual procedure, but if there was ever any name awkwardness it was because one or both of them simply didn’t know the other’s name. Having someone else’s name entirely used instead of his was new. It actually stung enough that Dean’s mind started kicking over, reeling through the events of the day before and trying to fit in the girl. 

“Who’s Cassie?” he asked thickly. 

Even as he was saying it the last of his memories clicked into place, that there had _been_ no girl the night before: He should be alone in bed. Whoever it was that infiltrated his sheets seemed to reach a similar conclusion a second before he did, and acted on it with a swiftness that belied her earlier, muzzy tone.

Dean found himself unceremoniously flipped out of the bed and on to the floor, which was only marginally harder. Before he could get his feet under him or even roll a safe distance away from the bed and his unknown attacker, something hard and heavy slammed into his stomach, knocking the wind out of him. Through watering eyes he could see that the girl – mid to late twenties, medium height, muscular build and chin length dirty blonde hair – had dropped on him knees first. The press of cold steel at his throat kept Dean from sitting up, not that he could if he tried. Right this instant he couldn’t even draw breath to shout at Sam.

But there was nothing preventing the girl from speaking, and if Dean had thought he was surprised before, he was floored – literally and figuratively – now. 

Neither letting up the pressure on the knife or taking her eyes off of Dean she shouted, “Sammy! Get your lazy ass out of bed and help me!”

Dean didn’t get more than half a second to wonder why this violent little stranger was calling _his_ brother for help before he was distracted by the sound of voices, two of them, replying to her shout. They both sounded confused, and then both were raised in alarm, apparently at discovering each other, though the words were lost in the jumble. One of the voices was definitely Sam, though. 

Dean nearly gave himself a second smile on the knife as he tried to see what was going on in the other bed, craning as far as he could but only catching flailing limbs and blankets over the edge of the mattress. Being pinned supine on the floor was not the best position for a view. But Dean could hear the struggle just fine and could watch the expression on the gal holding him down. From the look of it, she didn’t like whatever was happening, but the distraction wasn’t enough to loosen her grip on him. Very professional, whoever she was.

It was over quickly, whatever was happening, and Dean could see Sam sit up in the bed, in much the same position as the girl holding him down was in. At least one of them was up.

“Who the hell are you?” Sam demanded, glaring at Dean’s captor from behind mussed, bed-head bangs.

“Could ask you the same thing, buster,” the girl shot back, staring daggers at his brother. “And what’s with the Santa’s Chip N’ Dale bit? You two decide to be creepy and then get too sleepy to stay vertical?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Talkin’ about you two weirdoes sneaking into our room and deciding to play sleepover.”

“Uh… sorry, but this is our room.”

The girl scoffed. Dean was rather impressed how well she could hold a conversation and him at the same time. He was waiting for an opportunity, for her focus to waver and grip to slacken just a little bit, but it wasn’t happening. Impressive, but annoying. “You really think that sorry excuse is going to work?” she snapped. “‘We thought it was our room, just wandered in, didn’t notice you’? Bull.”

“No, the lights were on when we came in last night,” Sam said slowly. Dean couldn’t see, but he heard his brother’s confusion well enough. The tone was much less belligerent, he could practically hear the questions lining up in his skull. 

If the girl could hear the difference, it didn’t have much effect on her. “So you’re saying we came in without noticing _you_? How stupid are you, kid?”

“No that—“ Now he sounded frustrated again. “That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying—“

“That you sleepwalked your way in? Because that’s even dumber—“

“No, just—“

Just as Dean was deciding to risk a nick or two in the interest of interrupting the pointless argument, a third voice beat him to it.

“Excuse me, hello?”

Sam tore his eyes away from the girl holding down Dean – god, this was humiliating – to look down at the girl _he_ had pinned. “We’re all freaked out and confused,” the voice said, sounding unreasonably reasonable. “And the shouting doesn’t seem to be getting us anywhere. Think maybe we could all take a step back – literally – and chill for a minute to try and sort it out?”

“Seconded,” Dean croaked out, moving his jaw as little as possible with the knife still pressing against his Adam’s apple.

The girl’s eyes flicked down to him for an instant – green, he thought – before fixing back on Sam, the bigger threat at the moment. Watching her face, the way her mouth twisted into something like a sneer and a snarl combined, Dean could tell she hated the idea of giving up any kind of advantage. In this case that was holding Dean down. But he could also see that she didn’t like how her friend was at Sam’s mercies, either. It was a question of how badly she wanted to see the other girl freed, how much of a threat she saw Dean as, and overall how much she thought she could trust either one of them. It was interesting watching the cogs turn, and turn quickly; he could almost call out a play by play by the muscles in her neck and jaw jumping, in feeling how her grip on him tightened or loosened. 

Finally, as Dean was beginning to seriously consider making some move to break loose, the girl said, “Fine,” and pulled the blade away from his throat – though she did not put it down. Her hard stare shifting between Dean, who was staying still until she was a safe distance away, and Sam, who was mirroring her every move in getting off of the girl he’d pinned.

When she was all the way to her feet and had taken a step back, Dean pushed himself away and stood up slowly, moving away from the beds and more towards the small open area of the motel room, his hands raised slightly. It was the strategic high ground, but he was fairly sure he’d gotten it by accident. Sam joined him as he backed away from the second girl – a very tall, lanky thing with dark hair cut in a shaggy style – who was working her way to the edge of the bed and toward the blonde, her eyes locked warily on the boys. He couldn’t say as he could blame them for that. He didn’t trust _them_ , either. 

Standing side by side, watching the two girls closely, Sam cast him a brief glance. “You okay, man?”

“Yeah, sure,” he replied, unconsciously rubbing at where the knife had been pressing. “Just a bit more aggressive than I usually like my early morning wrestling.”

The blonde glared at him, catching the comment, but was prevented making any sort of comeback by the taller girl. “You alright, Dee?”

“I’m supposed to be asking _you_ that, idiot,” ‘Dee’ snapped back.

“I’m fine, thanks,” was the unruffled reply.

“Well,” Dean said, doing his best to sound unshaken by finding two women in their room with no explanation as to how they got there. “As nice as this has the potential to be, mind telling us who you two are?”

Dee scowled at him. Or at least, the scowl already in place got deeper. “You first, buddy boy, you’re the ones who—“

“Dee,” the other girl stopped her quietly, acting as the diplomat. Dee sighed but clamped her mouth shut. The taller girl looked at them, face deliberately neutral. “I’m Samantha, and this is my sister Deanna.”

The room went very quiet, the brothers staring at the sisters with nearly identical expressions. When Dean looked over at Sam and raised his eyebrows as a silent ‘What’s going on?’ he only got a shrug and a shaking head in reply.

The exchange wasn’t lost on the sisters. “What is it?” asked Samantha.

“Oh, nothing. Just the family weird seems to have gotten an early start today.” Dean jabbed a thumb first at himself then his brother. “I’m Dean, this is Sam.”

There was another stunned pause as the girls gave them the same incredulous stare they had just received a moment before. Deanna spoke first. “Uh huh. And I’ll just bet that your last name’s Winchester, right?”

“Actually, yeah…”

“Oh, come _on_!”

* * *

So no, it hadn’t been the strangest morning ever. They’d been in the hunting business too long for a couple of girls with their names appearing in their beds to be as _Twilight Zone_ as it could be. But it was definitely a first, and that counted for something, Dean supposed. It was getting harder and harder to spring anything new on the Winchesters, but this? This counted. 

After some preliminary precautions – salt, silver, and holy water tests all around – the four were able to relax enough to sit and start talking. Once everyone was finished getting dressed, anyway.

After about half an hour they were all reasonably reassured that no one was a demon or other beastie in disguise, but neither was anyone any closer to figuring out what was going on. They took it in turns to tell stories about themselves, random and little known details that no one but Sam or Dean – or Samantha or Deanna – would know. Unless the girls were a shapeshifting creature that could read minds and had a _very_ , convoluted plan that necessitated them appearing as female versions of the brothers, then they really _were_ female versions of the Winchesters. Dean had serious trouble believing the former, so he was inclined towards the latter – though he still intended to keep an eye on them. Better safe than eviscerated and all that.

The girls seemed to reach the same conclusion, with Deanna still looking a little wary. Score one more point for her being him, minus a Y chromosome. 

Now, with the hunter ‘introductions’ out of the way, they were comparing notes to see what else was different between personal histories, if it was just gender or if there were other discrepancies, and just how far the gender flip-flop went.

They were sitting around the cheap round pressboard table, coffees and beers spread out for everyone. Well, most everyone. Dean was still pulling on his shirt, the last one to get dressed. This was an interesting detail, Dean thought, fishing his own beer out of the micro-mini fridge the motel provided. Wherever their very curvaceous counterparts got zapped from, their bags had come with them. It was convenient, since they slept in tees and underwear like the brothers did, and Dean doubted that anything they had would fit the two of them, especially Samantha if they went counterpart to counterpart. She was tall, but she wasn’t quite Jolly Green Giant tall.

“So, uh, let’s start from the beginning, I guess,” Sam began, looking between the two girls. “Back in the nursery, six months after I – and you, I guess – were born…”

“Yellow-eyed demon,” Samantha provided, gulping down her coffee with a grimace. “Azazel. Came in to the nursery late at night and slipped me a mickey of demon blood.”

“More like a first dose of heroin,” Deanna corrected. “You know, ‘first hit’s free’ kinda deal.”

Both of the Sams – god, this was weird – snorted a little at that, the ‘I’m not really amused, more frustrated with your bullshit, Dean’ snort. Good to see it wasn’t restricted to just his pain in the ass sibling. “And Azazel,” Dean said. “Did he sit or stand for the call of nature?”

Deanna snorted. “None of our business what his kinks were, but the meat suits he always grabbed were of the point-and-shoot variety.”

Which was a fair enough point, if a little on the snarky side. Who knew what sex demons really were? They only assumed based on what they tended to grab out of the human clothing rack. Kind of creepy to think about, really.

There was an awkward pause, made more awkward since Dean was fairly sure they all knew what question was coming next. It was a subject guaranteed to make Winchesters squirm a little: family.

Deanna beat everyone else out to the question. “So was it your mom or your dad who…?”

Another little silence, then Sam answered. “Our mom,” he said softly. “Mary Winchester. Walked in and got pinned to the ceiling, right before the whole place went up in smoke. Then our dad, John, he started hunting down Azazel and raised Dean and me in the life.”

Samantha nodded. “Same here.”

Dean took a swig of his beer, wondering if a light buzz would make the day look better. Though getting that off of beer wasn’t likely to happen. He foresaw a bar in his future. “Okay. So far it looks like pretty much the same reality or whatever, just that the folks popped out daughters instead of sons.”

“Or sons instead of daughters,” Deanna countered. 

“Yeah, whatever.”

“But that can’t be the full extent of it,” Samantha argued. “I mean… Sam. When you were at Stanford you had a _girl_ friend, right?”

Sam looked surprised. “Well, yeah. Jessica. She died the same way mom did, twenty years later.”

His counterpart nodded. “Same for me, expect instead of a girlfriend named Jessica, I had a boyfriend named Jesse.”

“Okay, so the genders on relationships are switched, too. Makes sense.”

“And it’s one of the very few things that _does_ ,” Deanna snapped. Dean noticed that one of her legs was bouncing under the table; a little tell of nervous energy. He wondered if it was deliberate, something she was allowing for now, or if she was just that sloppy. He hoped she was better on the job, as a sideways matter of personal pride. “When do we get to the part about _how_ these two scruffy us’s got here, and more importantly, _why_?”

“She—I’ve—She’s got a point,” Dean added. “We could sit here all week picking apart differences between our sides of the mirror, but that’s not really the issue here. Having femme doubles pop into bed with us might be a sign of something else, something _big_.”

“I agree,” Samantha said. “But we don’t know just now what information is important and what’s not. For all we know it could be similarities or differences in our histories that will give us a clue.”

“And sorry, _we_ popped into _your_ beds?” Deanna turned to look at Dean full on instead of out of the corner of her eyes like she had been. “I don’t remember falling through an interdimensional portal to get here. _You_ crashed in on _us_.”

“Come again?”

“You heard me,” she said, pointing at him accusingly. “This type of thing is always happening to us, and you learn to tell the difference between being the home team or the visitors. This is _our_ reality, bud.”

For a moment all Dean could do was stare, trying to piece together a coherent response. It was weird because he hadn’t thought about whose ‘home field’ they were in as being all that important, at least at the moment. But now he could feel his hackles rising at someone suggesting that _he_ was the invader. In the back of his mind Dean was very aware that the reason for that was because of _who_ he would be arguing with rather than about _what_. It didn’t stem the impulse, it just made him realize what a child he was being while he gave into it. “Oh yeah, sister? I don’t see your frigging name written on it,” he took a step closer to the table – one of those things one picked up after years of conducting interrogations. Make them uncomfortable as you get inside their personal bubble, and if at all possible, loom over the one being questioned. 

Deanna, in response to the step, pushed her chair away from the table, making it easier for her to spring up, eyes locked on him. It wasn’t the usual response, he stopped.

The two of them were caught in their personal staring contest for perhaps half a minute before a chuckle made them look away.

It was Samantha, hiding a wide grin behind her hand. She leaned a little closer to Sam, who was also watching them with a stupid little smirk. “That took a little longer than I thought it would, honestly.”

Sam nodded, looking between Dean and Deanna. “Yeah. I still give it a few hours on the outside before we have to start taking weapons away.”

“That long? I give it an hour. I’ll put money on it.”

“Oh yeah? How much?”

“Ten spot?”

“Done.”

The two Sams shook hands on it and, in unison, pointedly checked their watches before looking back up at their siblings, nearly identical smirks painted over their faces.

“Bitch,” the elder siblings tossed out.

“Jerk,” the younger ones responded without rancor.

Dean tossed up his hands. “This is getting us nowhere. How the hell did we end up in Mirror ‘Verse? I don’t remember stepping into any faulty transporters lately.”

Sam looked briefly confused at the _Star Trek_ reference – Dean rolled his eyes at his brother’s spotty knowledge of classic pop culture and caught his counterpart doing the same – and responded with a shrug. “I dunno, Dean. This isn’t something I’ve ever heard of before, from anyone or anywhere.”

Of course. Seems like just about everything they ran into recently was either brand spanking new or so old that no one in the last few centuries could remember it. “Alright,” he said, pinching the bridge of his nose, feeling a headache coming on. “Then what do we know that could do something like this?”

“Take your pick,” Deanna said with a groan. “Anything from witches to demons to angels could have the juice for something like this. Hell, even a regular old Joe Schmo off the street could pull it off if he got his hands on something with clear enough instructions.”

“It might not even be something that strong,” Samantha said thoughtfully. “I mean we don’t know exactly what is going on, so it could be something like a djinn, and we’re all just tripping out heavyweight.”

“A djinn?”

The girl shrugged at her sister’s question. “It’s not impossible. We’ve seen djinn induce nightmares as well as dreams, so why not something in between?”

“But this? A brown acid trip with the other side of the wrong bathroom door? I’m having trouble seeing what the point of that would be.”

Samantha sighed in frustration. “Not saying that it _is_ a djinn, Dee, just that it might be something _like_ it. Something that’s making us hallucinate. Knowing what’s caused this would go a long way to knowing what kind of mojo we’re dealing with.”

“Awesome,” Dean chuckled. “Instead of a transporter malfunction, we could be stuck on the holodeck. Knowing what did this would help with knowing how, and knowing what happened would clue us in on what did it.”

Everyone paused for a second, processing. Sam sighed. “Chicken or egg deal. Which do we try to figure out first to unravel the rest?”

Deanna stood up abruptly and headed for the door, grabbing her oversized jacket on the way out and shrugging it on. “Well, I know which one I’m going for first.”

“What’s that?” Samantha called.

Deanna turned at the door and pointed back at them. “Egg. Or rather: eggs, with a side of bacon. Can’t think properly without something to eat first.” She popped open the door, then called back over her shoulder, “Anyone who wants to come along hurry up. I’m starving!”

The door banged shut, and the three remaining in the room all shared a look. Without having to exchange another word they all got up and shrugged into shoes and jackets. When Sam came close enough to him that he could speak privately, Dean muttered, “Maybe she’s not as bad as I thought.”

“Why, because she thinks with her stomach, like you?”

Dean grinned at his brother, letting the little dig slide by. “It’s hard to stay mad at a chick that’s got her priorities straight, y’know?”

Sam just rolled his eyes and continued tying his shoes. Dean chuckled a little and started thinking about what he thought sounded good for breakfast. It really was hard to stay annoyed or frustrated when the promise of a solid meal was close at hand. Less than thirty seconds later that fine mood was broken by the familiar rumble of a _very_ familiar engine coming from the parking lot. Dean’s head snapped up at the sound like a hunting dog’s.

“She wouldn’t…”

Dean bolted for the door and yanked it open, squinting into the early morning sunlight. He found what he was searching for an instant later. “Hey!” he shouted. “Get the hell out of Baby!”

About ten minutes later, after some heated argument, a few colorful phrases and a slight bruise or two, Sam handed Samantha ten bucks out of his wallet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ll admit it. This is fun.
> 
> I’ve been to Kettle Falls, (lived close to it once), so hopefully I’m not getting anything wrong with that town. Cut Bank, though, I’m working completely off of what I can find on the net.
> 
> Yes, I spell Castiel’s nickname as ‘Cass’ rather than ‘Cas.’ This isn’t because it’s the official way to spell it, and I’m not fighting to get it recognized as the proper way to spell his name – I’m not aiming to start any fan wars, here. It’s just that I watch the show with subtitles and read the books, and his name is always spelled as ‘Cass,’ and I’ve gotten used to it. And personally I think it looks more balanced with two ‘S’s. I’m fine with anyone’s personal choices as to how they spell it, and it doesn’t bother me to read it as ‘Cas,’ I just prefer ‘Cass’ when writing it out. :)


	2. Part II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As a matter of continuity, this is taking place somewhere during Season 6. I’m not sure where exactly, and for the most part it shouldn’t matter too much- and I might muck up the timeline a little here and there. I’ll try not to, but don’t squint too close, or you might notice. ;)

### Part II

### Elsewhere.

* * *

It was incredible. Already there were changes taking place. Small perhaps, but small in the same way a bouncing pebble down a slope of loose shale was ‘small.’ As it clattered down it would jog still more pebbles loose, who in their turn would disturb still more stones, the tumbling rocks growing in size, until the whole slope was a moving cascade, tons of sliding earth.

Until the whole mountain came down.

A giggle punctuated the silence. Once it might have held some semblance of sanity, but that had long ago frayed away. Now it was high, manic, and uncontrolled. It was the kind of giggle that came out unexpectedly, for no reason, and would only set the giggler to more of the same as they laughed at their own state of piteousness. And so it proved here, as one high pitched giggle was followed by another, and another. 

_It was all so perfect, all so ludicrous, all so mad_ , the laugher in the dark thought deliriously. And all so simple, like tipping over the first domino and watching all the rest fall, or throwing a match into a paper mill and just waiting for the screams to start. 

And the screams would come, oh, _how_ they would come! It would be glorious, the chaos and anarchy that would shake the world until it all came apart at the seams, the tattered shreds of what had once been peeling back to reveal what lay beneath, what had always been there but had been mercifully hidden. 

A hand, trembling with exhaustion and madness, reached out to take hold of a clear glass jar. Inside there floated an irregular lump of flesh and muscle. So many hearts had to be collected, rows of similar jars lined several shelves, filled them end to end. Large and small, young and old, beast and bird and human, there was an entire spectrum of fleshy pumps arranged, all collected within the last moon month. 

All of them worth the effort they had taken in their harvesting. All of them more pebbles to send clattering down the slope.

With shaking, reverent fingers, the heart was lifted from its jar, and just as reverently, it was torn into with grinning teeth.

* * *

### Here.

* * *

It was a rather dispirited group that met up again that evening at one of the few local bars. There were only so many places you could search, only so many people you could question in a town as small as this. And with their number effectively doubled, it took even less time than it normally would for a single set of Winchesters. 

After having their collective breakfast that morning at the most likely looking diner they could find – it being decided by democratic vote that one of the Sams drive while the two older siblings sulked in the back seat – they’d all done a quick job of outlining and comparing of the cases that had brought them into the area in the first place. It seemed fairly probable that the case would have something to do with their gender swapped doubles, as it was rare, if ever, when there was more than one thing happening in the same town at the same time. 

It didn’t take very long to figure out that the cases – or case, they still couldn’t tell if they were dealing with multiple realities or what – were identical. They were all following a series of deaths where the victims were minus one vital organ: the heart. The body trail had stretched ever a nice, long piece of the Pacific and Inland Northwest over the course of a month, with the latest ones having taken place only three days ago in Kettle Falls. Everything aligned perfectly between the two pairs of siblings, to the point of being creepy. Even the results of their questioning and investigating the day before were identical to each other. 

With that established, and having nothing better to go on, the four Winchesters decided to continue along the same lines as before and hope that it would lead to some kind of clue as to _why_ there were four of them. They broke up the duty roster between them and headed out as soon as their plates were cleared. Dean and Deanna – who said she preferred being called Dee – took on the leg work, scoping the scenes of the murders, checking in with any stray witnesses, family or friends they had missed the day before, and seeing what they could dig up on any local legends on the off chance that might give them a lead to something bigger. In the interest of continuing the tenuous truce between the two of them, they decided to forgo the Impala for the time being and do what they could on foot. Until they needed to broaden their search beyond town limits everything was within walking distance, anyway.

Sam and Samantha, who were now dubbed Sammy and Sam respectively – to Sammy’s seething annoyance – were given the research and lore end of things. Sammy, who had the Impala since Dean and Dee couldn’t be trusted with it, was on library and public records detail, while Sam went back to the hotel to scour through what she could find on the net. Since none of them knew what it was they were looking for, it was generally accepted that the Sams had the tougher end of the job, at least as far as lead hunting went. For Dee and Dean the challenge was to not raise too many red flags with a second day of scouting around in such a small town. 

By the time the sun was starting to go down and it was time to meet back up to share what, if anything, they had found, everyone was exhausted and more than a little irritated. 

“Nothing,” Dee groused, twisting the cap off her beer with a little more ferocity than was strictly necessary. “From one end of this town to the other and nothing more supernatural than what we already picked up on yesterday.”

Sammy frowned, looking at his brother. “What, seriously nothing?”

Taking a long sip off of his own beer, Dean shook his head. “Not unless you count the stuff the local kids – and I’m talking _little_ kids – are scaring each other with at sleepovers. Or maybe the latest in fashionable internet legends floating around. We scored a big fat nada on the local lore.”

“What about the vics?” Sam asked. “Anything new turn up on them?”

Dean shrugged. “Nothing really useful.”

“Causes of death confirmed different for each one,” Dee explained. “One stabbed from behind, one strangled, the other bludgeoned with something hard and heavy. At first they thought baseball bat, now they’re thinking something a little thinner, like a pipe or something like it. As for the heart removal…”

“Definitely not Jack the Ripper quality,” Dean cut in with a half-smile. Any chance to get in a pop culture reference. A lifetime of hunting made it easier to grin at things like this.

Sammy pulled a face at his brother, but it was Sam who replied with a small frown. “You mean not precise like, say, a surgeon?”

“Bingo,” her sister said, raising her bottle in salute.

Dean leaned forward to continue explaining, his eyes taking on what Sammy considered a most definitely unhealthy gleam. They needed a vacation, Sammy decided. It was getting to be too much if they could get excited over the finer points of organ harvesting. “See, they can tell that whoever this guy was, he knew what he was going for and how to get to it, but the method was sloppy as you come. They were saying how no one who knew human bodies for a living would have left them as so much hash. _But_ , he did get to the hearts right away, no digging around in the lungs trying to find it, he homed right into them.”

“Which suggests practical experience, but no formal training,” Sammy said with a grimace.

“Just lots of practice,” Sam agreed, nose wrinkling. Then she shrugged. “Well, it fits well enough with what we already knew or assumed. After how many bodies whatever or whoever this is had left behind, it _should_ know its way around a thoracic cavity by now.”

Both of the elder siblings leered at Sam’s choice of words, glancing at each other with grins. Sammy rubbed at his forehead, feeling tired. He – and Sam – were meant to be the younger ones, right?

“But does it suggest anything else?” he asked exasperatedly, hoping to cut off any ‘clever’ comments on cavities.

“Determination,” Dee said with a shrug. “Digging elbow deep into a person for a heart, especially for someone who started out not knowing what they were doing, isn’t a weekend warrior gig. The hearts were all taken out at the scenes of the murders, too, so we could assume someone sporting a steel pair.”

“Or someone with a screw loose,” Sam pointed out. “God knows we’ve had our share of those over the course of our careers.”

Three heads nodded in agreement around the table. As a matter of habit, Sammy did a quick, discreet sweep to make sure their conversation was remaining private. It was a small bar in a small town, but Dad’s training was well ingrained, and they decided, without having to stop and discuss the decision, to get a table that was set at a moderate distance from the bar itself, where the highest concentration of patrons was gathering. But even though there were a great many people coming in, filling the bar up despite the relative anonymity of the place, no one paid the least attention to them. 

Sammy was relieved, but confused. It made a nice change, but that was the thing: it was a _change_. Normally as the new guys – or girls, he supposed – in town, they naturally drew some attention just by being there. Then, once they had the attention, Dean usually made sure that they kept it. Or rather, _he_ kept it if he could.

His brother was almost laughably predictable when it came to their ‘friendly local interrelations.’

But that wasn’t happening now, even though they were in a bar, a venue that usually only increased the number of random people coming over to bother them. It wasn’t until he looked around at himself, Dean and their two female selves, that it hit him what the reason could be. He realized that it might be because they looked like two couples enjoying a night out, setting up an invisible barrier to all the singles looking for a hookup. Or at the least, they looked like a very large family unit, which had nearly the same ability to put people off.

He decided not to clue Dean into this little insight, even if he should happen to question it. 

“So where does all of this leave us, exactly?” he asked. “Does it tell us _anything_ we didn’t already know, about either case?”

There was a brief pause, then Dean shrugged, mirroring his counterpart. “Whatever it is, it’s either human or very human-like, maybe a newly turned monster still learning the ropes. But I can’t see this as being a beastie’s kind of job. Too methodical.”

Sam nodded thoughtfully, tapping the tabletop with distracted fingers. Sammy tried to shake off the creepy feeling itching at his shoulders. It was still weird to see his own face and mannerisms on a female. It was one of the few things in the last few years that had made him feel truly displaced, probably because it was reasonably subtle and hard to get used to. “It would make sense,” she said, even her voice similar but different from his own. “The non-humans tend to hole up in one area and not move around too much. But humans with any experience know how to keep their hunts off the radar.”

“So, we’re probably dealing with someone inexperienced,” Sammy thought out loud, “but with a focus. They’re killing with the purpose of taking hearts, but what do they need them for?”

Under the table, Dean’s leg began to bounce a little. “We’ve been running under the assumption that the hearts were needed to keep this thing alive, like food or something. But if we have a human on our hands then it’s more likely we’re looking at ingredients for something. Something big, with the bulk we’re looking at.”

Dee looked up at him, and Sammy was relieved that whatever they had gone through throughout the day seemed to have lessened a lot of the hostility that had been going on between them before. “Witches, then, juicing up for a spell?”

Dean nodded. “Or something like it, if not ‘witches’ exactly. This doesn’t seem quite right for them either – no hex bags or gooey deaths going on – but yeah. A ritual would seem just about right.”

“Sounds reasonable,” Sammy agreed, looking over at Sam, who also nodded. “But then the questions would be, does that relate at all to,” he circled his finger around the table, indicating the four of them, “ _this?_ If it does, is it directed at us specifically, or is it just a side effect; if it’s a side effect, what is it _actually_ going somewhere else; and what is it that it’s done to us, really? We still don’t know if one or other of us are from another reality, if one or other of us are doubles wished into being, or if one or _all_ of us are just dreaming all of this up.”

“Why don’t we take the ‘this might be an illusion’ option off the table for now?” Sam put in, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Otherwise this is going to become impossible to figure out. If we’re seriously going to consider that a probable scenario then we might as well question our entire lives from our earliest memories on.”

“This is _not_ an illusion.”

Sammy had the advantage of facing the right way and seeing Cass blink into existence at the same time the rough baritone cut through their conversation. It still startled him – he would never get used to the angel’s sudden entrances and exits – but all he did was jump, his knees jogging into the underside of the table. Sam, who could also see when Cass appeared, jumped quite a bit, gasping and cursing. Dean and Dee, on the other hand, were facing away from him, Cass popping into being directly behind them. Dean, who had been swigging back some of his beer, choked and started coughing. Dee actually started violently enough that she fell halfway out of her chair, flailing and cursing, and drawing some attention from the rest of the bar’s clientele. If anyone happened to register that there was now a scruffy man in a trench coat where there hadn’t been before, it didn’t show, they were all more interested in why one of the girls was clinging to her chair, trying to climb back in, and why Dean was choking on his drink.

Cass paused, looking over the four of them and the slight anarchy his appearance had caused. “This is all very real,” he said, somehow still sounding serious over the sound of Dean’s choking. 

“Goddammit, Cass,” Dean snapped hoarsely. “Wear a bell, would you please?”

Cass frowned at Dean, his head tilting as it usually did when he was puzzled.

Sammy rubbed at his bruised knee, frowning at the angel and ignoring the wide-eyed looks coming from Sam and Dee. “What do you mean, Cass, you got a bead on what’s going on here?”

“In a manner of speaking…” he said, his eyes coming to rest first on Samantha and then on Deanna. Sammy didn’t think he looked confused, really, but there was a look in his eye that said he was deeply interested, even fascinated in this newest development. Sammy smiled. Good to know that whatever Cass knew it didn’t immunize him from some of the weirdness of the situation. Though, he thought, his smile faltering, even Cass not knowing what was happening wasn’t really a _good_ thing.

Dean, however, was still wiping up the beer he had sprayed across the tabletop, and in any case seemed too put out to notice the stares going on between the angel and their female selves. “And what the hell is that supposed to mean?” he snapped, tossing a sopping wad of napkins into a garbage bin. “Do you have any idea what all of this means or not?”

“And why don’t you sit while you tell us?” Sammy suggested, looking around the room and some of the odd looks that were still being sent their way. All they needed was problems with the locals on top of everything else to make the situation really impossible.

Cass, coming out of the slight trance the two women put him into, followed Sammy’s look and nodded. He hesitated, then walked around the table and took a seat between Sammy and his counterpart. Going around the table from Sammy’s left they were arranged now as Cass, Samantha, Deanna, Dean, then Sammy. Cass didn’t seem fully comfortable seated where he was, but then he never seemed fully comfortable when he was sitting at all. It always looked like remaining still required more effort on his part than it would for him to stay on the move. Possibly this time it had something to do with the two extra sets of eyes firmly locked on him, but Sammy doubted it. Cass seemed just as willing to return those stares.

Before Cass could begin to explain himself, Dee broke in, leaning across the table with a scowl firmly in place. “So, wait a second,” she pointed at the angel. “ _You’re_ Castiel? ‘Cass’? The one who dragged me… _him_ ,” the pointing finger switched to Dean, “out of Hell a couple of years back?”

Cass nodded, stare still fixed on the tomboyish girl glaring at him with furious green eyes. “Correct. And you appear to be Dean, but not a Dean of now or here. Some of the more obvious differences aside, you and your… sister,” here he glanced at Samantha sitting beside him, “still stand out.”

“One of those obvious differences being a ‘Y’ chromosome?” Sam asked sarcastically.

Cass nodded, not acknowledging the tone or expanding on his observation. 

“But wait,” Dee said, and glanced over at Dean, who was still cleaning his hands but watching everything going on all the same. “I was told that angels are genderless, it’s just the vessels that give them the appearance of being male or female.”

Sammy frowned. “You’re saying that _your_ Castiel is a woman?”

“Her vessel sure as Hell is,” Dee snapped, and glared back at Cass as though his sex were a personal insult. Cass shifted slightly, dropping his gaze to his hands folded on the stained tabletop. “So it’s true then, it’s not _just_ us who are different.”

Dean frowned, as did Sammy, not quite understanding what she meant. Before either of them could question her on it, though, Sam spoke up. “But if the Castiel we have here is male, and he says what’s going on is real, does that mean that this is _your_ reality that we have somehow crossed over to?”

Cass took a breath, still examining the highly uninspiring surface of the table. “This is most certainly real,” he said quietly. “And, as you have surmised, it is not exactly the reality we’ve known. The boundaries between such things seems to have become suddenly very permeable…”

“… but we’re not necessarily in _your_ reality,” a new but familiar voice finished.

Everyone save Cass jumped again, though this time the reaction was not as violent as the first time, and didn’t attract nearly as much attention. Another figure had appeared, again out of nowhere, and again directly behind Dee and Dean, who each whipped around, Dean’s hand unconsciously reaching for a weapon before stopping partway there. 

Sammy stared. He supposed he should have been expecting it, he might have been, subconsciously. This second figure that had appeared was female, a little bit shorter than Cass, and her features were a little lighter than their angel’s, but otherwise there was no doubt who this was. She wore a set of slightly rumpled but professional clothes under a long, slightly overlarge trench coat. Her hair was long, dark, unbound and slightly curly, falling around a face that was pale and fine featured, with a full mouth and pair of intensely blue eyes. More than the sum of any of these parts however, it was in _how_ she stared that convinced Sammy that he was looking at the female version of Cass. Nearly unblinking, her face curiously immobile as she looked around at the faces staring back at her, her mouth set in a neutral line. 

Dee, on seeing who was behind her this time, let out a sigh of relief. “Thank god you’re here, Cassie.”

The female Castiel looked at Dee, and a very brief smile seemed to tug at her lips. She looked over at Dean, who was staring at her open mouthed, and frowned, brows drawing close over her nose and her head tilting in an uncanny mirror of the male Cass. After a moment she blinked, looked back over the rest of them. “You may wish I were not. My being here, as well as myself,” she nodded at Cass, “makes the situation more complex than it might have been otherwise.”

“How do you mean?” Sam asked, frowning. “I would have thought two angels would be better than one. Even if, technically, they were the same one,” she added.

“Not really,” Cass said, still looking supremely uncomfortable. “With the situation in Heaven as it is, we cannot simply reveal ourselves to determine where we are within the realities. If there were just one or the other of us, then yes, you could use us as a way to determine which you were in and we,” he nodded at ‘Cassie,’ “could do what we could to correct the problem.”

“But with both of us here the situation isn’t so simple,” Cassie picked up. At a prompt from Dee she had taken a seat between her and Dean. It was a little hard to tell, but Sammy thought she looked more comfortable sitting than her male version. It provided a contrast to Dean, who did not appear at all happy about sitting next to the angel. “With both of us here, there’s still no ready way to determine which of the realities this one is. The simplest way, would be to return to Heaven and use what resources we have there. But to do that would alert everyone that there is an imbalance. One that Raphael and his supporters could use to their advantage.” She fixed Cass – herself, perhaps in a more literal sense than with either of the Winchesters and their doubles – with a heavy stare. “And we cannot afford anything of the kind. Not now.”

Cass nodded. “Agreed.”

“Well that’s just great,” Dean huffed, scrubbing his face with a hand. “So we know this isn’t a dream we’re just going to wake up from, but still don’t know where we are, how we got here, if the heartless bodies have anything to do with it _or_ how to fix it. Plus,” he added, looking between the two Castiels, “we have a couple of wing clipped angels on our hands, as well.”

The reactions around the table were interesting to watch from Sammy’s point of view. Cass’s head bowed, as though he were ashamed of his incapability to help. His female self frowned, and looked at him questioningly, though he missed the expression entirely. Dee glanced at Dean in surprise, and Sam, after doing the same, looked at Cass and then up at Sammy, raising her eyebrows questioningly. Sammy wasn’t at all sure what she was meant to be asking, so shook his head with a shrug. He turned back to his brother. “C’mon, Dean, it’s not that bad. It’s not like they’re broken or anything, they just can’t reveal themselves to Heaven. They’re still _angels_ and that’s better than just the four of us working alone.”

Castiel – _their_ Castiel – cleared his throat. “Actually, we will be of less assistance then you might think. We’ll have to remain completely hidden, unknown to all of the rest of Heaven’s Host. It will require us to severely limit our actions to remain unnoticed.”

Dean groaned, leaned back in his chair. Dee glanced at Cassie. “So no angel juju?”

Cassie took up the habit of examining the tabletop. “Very little. We’re effectively on the run from all of Heaven, including our supporters. It would be too risky to reveal this kind of instability of realities to anything as powerful as an angel, let alone an archangel.”

Silence settled over the table for a while, with each of the Winchesters left to examine the insides of their glasses or their bottles and the angels to stare into space. Seemingly unconsciously, Sammy saw Dee put a hand on Cassie’s shoulder and pat her reassuringly. The angel didn’t look over at her, but she did seem to relax a little. 

“So…” Sam said, sounding tired. “Now what?”

Everyone else around the table shifted, exchanging glances. Finally Dean stood up. “Now is time for another round of drinks,” he announced.

“Is that the best you can come up with?” Sammy called after him, but only got a dismissive wave in return. 

Dee stood up as well. “Actually doesn’t sound too bad,” she commented.

“Of course it doesn’t,” Sam muttered.

“Shut up,” her sister responded easily. “Anybody else want something?”

There was a general chorus of begrudging ‘yes’ from the Sams, while both of the angels declined. For the next hour or so the group spent their time making their way through several rounds, kicking around ideas for what they should do next and what should be done about two angels trying to stay out of Heaven’s sight. They didn’t make very much progress.

* * *

### Later.  
Back at the Motel.

* * *

Dean flopped down onto his bed with a groan. It was past midnight and even after helping the girls move their stuff to a second room he hadn’t fully recovered from two hours spent drinking at the bar. Sammy wasn’t feeling overly sympathetic. He knew Dean _could_ be a little more sober if he tried. By now the effects of drunkenness were optional up to a point, and if Dean felt like he _should_ be sober he could shake the buzz he had going on right now. The fact that he didn’t was more telling on just how tired and put out he was rather than on how much he’d had to drink.

Sammy sighed and sat down on the edge of his bed, running his fingers through his hair. Whatever buzz Dean still had, it was absent from him, and he felt like he could really use one. Whatever was happening now was weird even for them, which was an impressive as it was annoying. Bleeding realities… it sounded more like science gone awry than magic, or science _fiction_ at any rate. He had the weirdest feeling that when they tracked down whatever or whoever was doing this they were going to find a lab full of eggheads and computers rather than a crypt of witches and cauldrons. Only the detail with the hearts really had Sammy still thinking magic more than physics student screwing with the continuum. 

Still, it brought up a lot of interesting – if headache inducing – questions, all of the sort he thought he’d left behind at the school. How many realities were there, and were there different versions of him and Dean in every one of them? Was there always something different about them in all those realities, or were _they_ exactly the same in some of them and something else, completely unrelated to them, was the thing that was different? If their reality and that of their female selves had crossed, then were there others out there that had crossed as well, with each other? And all of this was ignoring the added elements of Heaven, Hell, angels, demons and God thrown in, trying to figure out where they all fit into this mess. 

Facedown on his bed, Dean chuckled into the pillows, breaking off Sammy’s train of thought. He was rather grateful for the distraction. “Dude,” he slurred slightly, voice muffled by the bed. “Crazy assed day or what?”

Sammy chuckled with him, tired. “Yeah,” he agreed. “Not often you wake up to a girl in your bed and still have it only be yourself.”

“In your case, Sammy, it’s not every day you wake up to a girl in your bed, period.”

“Shut up, Dean,” he tossed back, but it was without much energy. It was a running gag that had run so long that it had lost practically all of its annoyance factor by now. What little there had been to begin with. 

“Seriously, you could take tips even from girl-me,” he said, sitting up with a grunt. When Sammy just raised an eyebrow at him Dean nodded unsteadily. “Totally on the level, man. You remember the bartender? Pretty redhead with the, ah, triskele pendant?” He tapped his sternum.

“Dean, we’re in the middle of a case, possibly two, and you’re _still_ trying to score numbers?”

Dean shrugged, an unapologetic smirk plastered on his face. “Life is short, as we know, _carpe diem_ and all that. But no, that’s the thing. I was totally going to make a try for it, but before I even got an opening line out there, she zeroed in on someone else and gave me the cold shoulder.” The smirk grew into a grin. “She homed in on _Deanna_.”

Sammy paused, his mind going momentarily blank. When it fired back up again it went into overdrive, piecing together some of the various observations he’d made over the last twenty or so hours. The conclusion he came back with nearly had his brain shutting down again. “Really?” he said, wondering if Dean had reached the same conclusion he had, and deciding that if he still looked this happy than he probably hadn’t. “And how, uh. How did Dee react to that?”

“Really well,” he said, sounding a little proud, like he was talking about a sister of theirs. That was certainly an easier way to think of them than as themselves with breasts. “Didn’t freak or nothin’, just said thanks but no thanks. But just think,” he said, grin widening even further. “I’m such a ladies man, I’m a ladies man even when _I’m_ a lady!”

Sammy felt his face go blank again. He forced a smile. “Yeah. Sure, Dean.” And he let the subject drop.

He really doubted that the bartender would have been the first time Deanna had a woman hit on her, and he doubted that had she responded more positively that _that_ would have been a first, either. Thinking back on their evening in the bar, after the Castiels had appeared, and how Dee and Cassie had interacted… Yeah, he doubted that a redhead would have been Dee’s first experience on that side of the fence. He’d wondered why Samantha had been giving Cass and Dean odd looks. She must have been wondering then what he was wondering now, with just how far the personality parallels went. Then he remembered what they had discussed that morning, about how it wasn’t just _them_ whose gender had flipped, but those of previous partners, such as Jessica aka Jesse.

Sammy face palmed. How hadn’t he seen that instantly?

It would also explain why, even though Cass had disappeared somewhere, hopefully somewhere he wouldn’t be spotted by anyone who would think he didn’t belong, Cassie had stayed, opting to follow Samantha and Dee to their new room. God, he could be dense sometimes. 

He looked up at his brother through his fingers, who was smiling blissfully into empty space. 

At least he wasn’t _as_ dense as some, he thought.

Thinking back on how they had moved the girls to a new room, having to go back to the main office and check in again for another double, got Sam to think in a new vein. He hadn’t really thought of it before because the old guy behind the counter hadn’t been there when he and Dean had originally checked in. Instead it had been an older woman, whom Sam assumed was the old guy’s wife. He hadn’t recognized any of them, males or females, so it wasn’t some alternate version of the woman. But if it _had_ been, that would have been a good way to tell whose reality they were in.

But there _were_ people who knew them, and would be able to act as an outside pair of eyes, tell them what sex they were ‘meant’ to be. Bobby, for one.

Sam made to grab his phone, determined to solve the mystery sooner rather than later, and cursing himself for not having thought of this hours ago. But then he spotted the time. Nearly 1am, and it would be even later in South Dakota. Bobby was used to being woken up at all hours, of course, it came with the job. But Sam thought this particular situation, and the massive amounts of explaining it would require, would better waiting until morning when everyone was really awake. It wasn’t a dire emergency, at least so far as they knew, It could wait a few more hours.

Dean chuckled again, his mind wandering somewhere, still in its slightly drunken haze. “You know,” he said, staring off into space. “I can’t blame the bartender. Chick-me is _hot_.”

Sam groaned. “Dude, really?”

“What? She is, and don’t tell me you didn’t notice!”

Sam tried, he tried _really_ hard not to think about it and failed. “Just… don’t get into too much appreciation, okay? The self-love would make a nice change, but… _ew_.”

Dean paused, eyes narrowing in intense consideration. “Would that be considered a kind of masturbation-?”

“Dude!”

“Would it make it any better if I were looking at Samantha?”

Sam’s eye twitched. “No,” he said, completely deadpan. “No it would not, Dean. In fact that’s really, _really_ creepy.”

Dean laughed, and flopped back over onto the bed, arranging himself for sleep. Sam let him settle in before he decided to prod him a little. 

“What, no perverted thoughts for Cassie, too?”

There was a pause. Then, “… no.”

“Really?”

Dean shifted, burying his head deeper into the flat pillows. “Alright for the nerdy type, I suppose, but yeah. No.”

Since Dean couldn’t see it, Sam grinned, shaking his head. His brother really was dense sometimes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Six characters in one scene is hard as hell to write…
> 
> Yes, I spell Castiel’s nickname as ‘Cass’ rather than ‘Cas.’ This isn’t because it’s the official way to spell it, and I’m not fighting to get it recognized as the proper way to spell his name – I’m not aiming to start any fan wars, here. It’s just that I watch the show with subtitles and read the books, and his name is always spelled as ‘Cass,’ and I’ve gotten used to it. And personally I think it looks more balanced with two ‘S’s. I’m fine with anyone’s personal choices as to how they spell it, and it doesn’t bother me to read it as ‘Cas,’ I just prefer ‘Cass’ when writing it out. :)
> 
> Thanks for reading, everyone! I’ll do my best to get part three into the works soon… really, I’ll try. But hugely busy just now, so it’ll probably be a while. :)

**Author's Note:**

> I’ll admit it. This is fun.
> 
> I’ve been to Kettle Falls, (lived close to it once), so hopefully I’m not getting anything wrong with that town. Cut Bank, though, I’m working completely off of what I can find on the net.
> 
> Yes, I spell Castiel’s nickname as ‘Cass’ rather than ‘Cas.’ This isn’t because it’s the official way to spell it, and I’m not fighting to get it recognized as the proper way to spell his name – I’m not aiming to start any fan wars, here. It’s just that I watch the show with subtitles and read the books, and his name is always spelled as ‘Cass,’ and I’ve gotten used to it. And personally I think it looks more balanced with two ‘S’s. I’m fine with anyone’s personal choices as to how they spell it, and it doesn’t bother me to read it as ‘Cas,’ I just prefer ‘Cass’ when writing it out. :)


End file.
